Chapter Text
The book feels wrong in Sam’s hands as she stands in line in the Barnes and Noble in the coffee shop on 5th street. She can feel the bulge of the letters that made up the title against her palm, feels as though they’ll burn into her skin the way a crucifix would a demon.
Sam attempts to ignore the odd looks and skeptical eyes as she moves her way through the line, keeps her head down and earbuds at nearly full volume, the two adding up and equaling a very annoyed check out lady who was snapping her fingers to try and get Sam’s attention.
When Sam finds her eyes, they widen in annoyance and point at the checkout. Sam quickly moves forward, placing the book face down under the guise of making it easier for the woman to scan the barcode, to which she does with practiced ease. She tells her her total, to which Sam hands over her debit card, and asks if she wants a bag for her book, to which Sam eagerly bobs her head.
Once the woven handle is thrust into her hand, Sam’s dismissed with a “ Next! ” and Sam hurries out the exit at a pace that would make even a New Yorker somewhat skeptical. The little bell overhead rings to chirp her goodbye, and it plays on repeat within her ears as she leans her back against the wall of the shop, hand against her rapidly moving chest as she attempts to calm both her heart and her breathing.
Breathe , Sam , she tells herself, just breathe, you’re good, it’s only two blocks back to the apartment, you’re okay, you can make it .
With a large inhale through her nose, Sam pushes herself up off the wall. With a vice-like grip on the bag’s handle, Sam walks, pace only somewhat behind that of what she took to get out of the store.
It only takes two songs before she’s back at the apartment. She walks in to find Tara on the couch, sandwiched in between Mindy and Chad. Tara raises her head, smiling when she sees Sam and raising her hand in greeting.
“Hey Sam,” she smiles, before her eyes find the bag, “Barnes and Noble? And you didn’t take me? How cruel.” Tara pouts, her hand over her heart as she dramatically flops back against the couch into a slump.
“Ouch, the lowest of blows.” Mindy says, whilst Chad teasingly fans at Tara’s face with his hand.
“No wonder you guys are film and theater majors, you certainly have a flair for the dramatics.” Sam smirks, a light playful roll of her eyes punctuating her statement as she shrugs off her jacket and places it haphazardly on the hook against the door.
“What’d you get?” Chad asks, and Sam can’t help but blanche somewhat.
“Oh, just some book that was on sale, I’ve been meaning to read it for a while.” Sam shrugs.
“We were gonna play some Mario Kart, you want in? You can be Toadette,” Tara waggles her eyebrows, and Sam lets out a breath of a laugh.
“No, no I’m good, gonna get started on this.” Sam tells them, holds up the bag for a few moments before lowering it back against her calf. “I’ll be in my room if you guys need me. Kick their butts, Tare!”
A mixture of hey’s! and count on it! chime out in chorus, and Sam shakes her head in amusement as she makes her way to her room, shutting the door behind her. She walks over and sits on the side of the bed, swallowing hard as she lifts the book out of the paper bag.
Requel : Terror Returns to Woodsboro
A Gale Weathers Novel.
Sam holds it in her hands, studying it, moving her thumb along the cover. She wants to give it a chance, she wants to give Gale a chance. After all, she did play a major part in saving their lives — it was through Dewey’s sacrifice that Tara was still alive. There’s some part of her that can’t help but feel she owes Gale this.
But still, as she looks at it, she can’t help but to feel her stomach twist and churn. The book seems to mock her, to taunt her with an I know something you don’t .
Sam draws in a large inhale through her nose before turning the page, gaze softening at the second page, a Dedication page with one name:
Dewey Riley.
Beloved Sheriff of Woodsboro, Beloved Friend, Son, Brother and Spouse .
Sam flips a few more pages, until she’s at chapter one. Her music plays faintly in her earbuds, and she remains seated on the edge of her bed as she reads and thumbs through the pages.
Sam can hear Gale’s tone in the printed text, and she can’t help but feel a sense of amusement.
That is, until she flips over page 26.
And in comes Samantha Carpenter , reads the top of page 27, Or should I say Samantha Loomis, considering she is the illegitimate daughter of the infamous serial killer Billy Loomis, who had been the birth of the Ghostface Killings along with his accomplice, Stu Macher. An unstable girl, a born killer —
Sam isn’t able to process the next rows of text through the tears that blur her vision. Her heart pounds wildly in her chest, feeling it pressing against her voice box with every swallow she takes as it attempts to wedge itself through her throat like Santa up a chimney, trying to leap out her dry mouth in escape.
She blinks away the tears as she attempts to read the lines again, and again, and again — hoping every time that she had misread, misconstrued. But the sentence never changed shape into that of which Sam hoped it would each time desperate eyes reread it, that of which didn’t paint her in such a negative, unfair light.
That’s not fair! Her heart screams at her like a child to their mother, each beat it takes like a belligerent stomp of a defiant toddler. That’s just not fair!
Sam feels tears once again welling in her eyes, but does nothing to try and intercept their descent. The anger which paced up and down the pit of her stomach now ran rampant, crushing every nerve and cell beneath heavy boots.
Sam throws the book to the ground, her fingers burying themselves in hair just recently dyed black, fingernails sinking into her scalp, pulling at her hair.
A scream erupts from out her chest as she yanks her earbuds out and throws them to the ground, the force of it all causing her knees to buckle. Later, she’ll feel guilty, for Tara and Chad and Mindy are just in the living room and the walls are practically papier-mâché, she knows they must be thinking she’s being attacked again . That it’s happening again . But in that moment, logic no longer holds the reins that controlled her movements, her actions.
No, fear did, co-steering with anger.
Anger yanks hard on those reins it holds in its calloused hands, and Sam just so badly wants to let it out, wants to make it stop, wants to do anything to have those reins go slack. She turns, grabbing whatever she can and hurling it at the wall. She hears her heart cry with each object her trembling fingers swipe and hurl at the bedroom wall, coinciding with her own screams that threaten to rip her vocal cords.
Not fair! As a ceramic bear from the dresser shatters against the dingy beige wall.
Not fair! As a perfume bottle from the nightstand follows suit, the liquid of the half-filled bottle staining the wall.
Not fair! As a little picture frame becomes doomed to the same fate, the glass shattering and shards scattering with the pieces of ceramic.
Not —
The door opens with a slam, and Sam doesn’t even glance in its direction. Doesn’t see Tara, Mindy and Chad standing at the doorway. Doesn’t see Tara’s wide eyes, or Mindy’s concerned gaze, or Chad’s look of sympathy and confusion. A sob rips from her throat as she goes to pick up another picture frame, one of Sam with Tara, Mindy and Chad smiling at the lens in a group embrace. Holding it in a shaking hand, Sam reels her arm back like a Baseball pitcher, but before she can extend she feels arms wrapping around her arms, pinning them to her side, and hears her name called in rapid, desperate breaths.
“Sam! Sam, stop ! SAM!!”
Tara’s voice registers in Sam’s mind, but only faintly, like being able to make out the owner of a voice solely by its echoes. Sam struggles in Tara’s surprisingly strong hold, wriggles like a worm on a fishing hook.
“Let me go! Let me go!!! ” Sam cries, but it’s to no avail.
“Sam it’s just us, it’s just Tara, and Mindy and me,” Chad’s voice sounds out from somewhere, Sam not swiveling her head to figure out from where, “Sam just calm down, okay? You’re hurting Tara.”
Those words sound as clear as a bell to Sam’s conscience, and she turns in Tara’s arms enough to be able to see her face. She notices the way it’s scrunched slightly in pain, notices the tears in her eyes, the furrowed brows. The realization hits Sam like a brick over the head and she falls limp, legs giving out from underneath her. Tara holds Sam close against her chest as she lowers herself to the ground along with her, still holding her as they sit in a crumpled heap upon the carpet. Tara presses her cheek against the back of Sam’s shoulder as she continues to hold her tight, her desperate eyes catching sight of Mindy and Chad’s own.
“Sam, what’s going on?” Mindy asks, looking from Chad to Tara before kneeling and trying to meet Sam’s eyes. Sam keeps her chin lowered, refusing to meet Mindy’s eyes for fear of what she might find when she does.
Sam isn’t sure what would be worse, fear or pity .
A whimper sounds from out Sam, her arms still held by her sides. Her world is once again blurred by tears as she tries to sound out, “She … she -“
“She what?” Chad asks, concerned gaze trained on Sam. “Sam, what’s going on?”
Sam lifts a finger, hand tilting to point. Tara, Mindy and Chad’s eyes followed the path it pointed out, all blanching at the discarded book on the carpet.
Requel : Terror Returns to Woodsboro
A Novel by Gale Weathers
Mindy stands and walks the few steps that distance them from the book, bending down to pick it up, flipping it around.
“Read it,” Sam croaks out, eyes glazed over and glossy, “Page twenty-seven.”
Three pairs of furrowed brows first meet her request, before Mindy’s eyes travel to the beginning line of the left page.
“ And in comes Samantha Carpenter, ” Mindy starts, brows still furrowed, the tone similar to that she takes whenever she’s randomly called on to read aloud from her textbook in class, “ Or should I say —“ The rest of the sentence halts in her throat, her breath hitching.
“What? What is it?” Tara asks, eyes trained on Mindy, worry bleeding through her syllables like ink against thin sheets of paper.
Mindy sighs noisily through her nose before continuing,
“ Or should I say Samantha Loomis, considering she is the illegitimate daughter of the infamous serial killer Billy Loomis, who had been the birth of the Ghostface Killings along with his accomplice, Stu Macher. An unstable girl, a born killer —“
“Stop.” Tara demands, and Mindy does, shaking her head and laughing in disbelief as she slams the book face down on the top of the dresser.
“That fucking bitch,” Mindy seethes, eyes towards the ceiling and tongue gliding across her top teeth, her hands on either side of her hips.
“Wait — didn’t she promise she wasn’t gonna write a book about this? With - you know, because of Dewey?” Tara asks, and Sam simply gives a weak nod of her head in answer.
How foolish she was to believe her words as truth, for Gale never preceded them with ‘on the record’ .
“That fucking bitch,” Chad hisses, words echoing that of his twin’s as his hands clench into fists at his side. He lets out an angry puff of air before he sits down beside Tara, body angled so that he was facing Sam. Mindy quickly follows suit, flanking Tara’s other side.
“You know that’s not true, right?” Chad asks, ducking his head in an attempt to meet Sam’s avoidant gaze. “What she said is total bullshit, you know that, right?”
Chad, Mindy and Tara look at her expectantly, and Sam feels as though she’s a character in a play. Knows what lines she’s supposed to say, knows it’s her cue to say them by the others gazes, but yet, as though stage fright had taken hold —
She can’t .
Sam’s silence causes Tara’s eyes to narrow challengingly.
“ You know that’s not true, right? ” Tara echos, pressing the question. Sam gives a limp shrug of her shoulders in response.
“Hey,” Tara starts crawling so that she is now on her knees directly in front of Sam. “Sam?” She tries.
Sam doesn’t raise her head.
“Sammy, hey,” Tara tries, her voice sounding fragile, like the ceramic that lay scattered in shards opposite them.
At hearing the nickname that Sam hadn’t heard since before she was an official teen, her chin raises. She looks at Tara, looks at the mixture of worry and anger in her eyes and feels a combination of comfort and guilt that it’s there for her, that it’s risen on her behalf.
“Sam, it’s bullshit.” Tara seethes. “She’s—“
“Right,” Sam sighs, and Tara falters, wincing somewhat as Tara asks,
“What?”
“She’s right.” Sam whimpers, “I — I am unstable. I have been since I was fucking thirteen years old. I’m unstable and I ruined everything because of it and — and what if I am just a born killer? My father was fucking Billy Loomis , he’s the one who started this shit and now I’m the reason you guys are stuck in it. Sometimes I just wish I was never born, or that Richie had finished the—“
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence Samantha Carpenter.” Tara growls out, and the others eyes somewhat widen in surprise at the tone, never knowing Tara was capable of it. “Yes, Carpenter . It doesn’t matter if he was your biological father, what matters is that you’re a good person who’s only ever done wrong because you were trying to protect me,” Tara’s words begin to wobble and her throat bobs, tears quick to well in her eyes. She doesn’t so much as swipe them with her finger when they fall down her cheeks, “You’re not what Gale Weathers wrote in that stupid book. You’re a good person with a good heart who’s just trying to do the right thing,”
“Who’s just trying to look after her family,” Mindy cuts in and supplies.
“And protect them with all she’s got.” adds Chad.
A faint smile tugs at Sam’s lips, before they morph back into a frown as Tara rises to her feet. She swipes the book off of the dresser, glares at page twenty-seven before she rips it from off its binding. Both Sam and Chad’s eyes widen, whilst Mindy’s jaw drops with a shocked glee, whooping when Tara proceeds to tear the page to shreds between trembling fingers.
“Woo, Go T!” Mindy whoops, before she pauses. “Wait, give me some!”
Tara hands over some remnants of the page to Mindy, to which Mindy begins to tear apart as well.
Chad jumps to his feet, and Mindy smirks gleefully as she hands him some, and Sam just blinks and watches, eyes flitting between them as their fingers move and paper shreds, pairing like an uncoordinated dance til it’s nothing but confetti on the carpet, no more discernible text remaining.
Tara huffs triumphantly as she looks at the bits and pieces on the floor. Chad purposely steps on as many as he can in the short distance to Sam, extending a hand to her. Sam stares at the offer for a few moments before a genuine smile blooms across her lips and she places her hand in his, allowing him to hoist her to her feet and stepping upon the shredded paper as she walks towards them.
“I can’t wait to fucking blast her ass on GoodReads.” Mindy says, and Sam’s shoulders shake with a laughter she wasn’t certain her body was still capable of possessing.
“I swear if we ever see her again I’m going to punch her. Right in the face.” Tara swears, eyes hardening over.
“Yeah you’ll have to get in line,” Mindy snorts, a protective undertone in her cadence.
“I’ll be the getaway driver — lady won’t even know what hit her - literally,” Chad offers with a hand up, and there’s a pause before the rest tiredly chuckle. Sam’s is breathy and light as she wipes at her eyes, and the others smile at her.
“C’mon, we’ll clean this up later.” Tara says, swinging an arm around Sam’s shoulders, standing on her tiptoes in order to do so. “In the meantime, I found that old Candy Land game — Sam what do you think, we gonna kick the twins’ butts or what?”
Mindy’s jaw drops with an exaggerated gasp, placing a hand over her chest for dramatic flare as she gawks at them.
“If you think you can take on the undefeated, reigning champs that are the Meeks-Martin Twins you are in for a rude awakening!” Chad declares, turning to Mindy and grinning.
“Hell yeah!” She says as she raises a hand for a high five, to which Chad eagerly slaps his palm to her own.
Tara turns to Sam, eyes wide and hopeful and waiting . Mindy and Chad wear diluted versions on their own faces as they too turn to Sam in anticipation.
Sam’s still for a few moments, and Tara’s heart lurches in her chest before Sam turns to her.
“Let’s go kick some Meeks-Martin butt.“ Sam says with a grin. It’s a weakened version of one, but it’s there, blooming like a sprout from out rubble and decay. Her hands raise to cradle Tara’s face within them, thumbs brushing away the remnants of tears on Tara’s cheeks. Tara smiles softly, leaning into the touch.
“That’s so sweet right there and it’s a total foreshadowing of what you’ll be doing when you guys cry after we cream your sorry butts!” Mindy laughs, poking her tongue out at Sam and Tara. Tara laughs as she sticks her tongue back out at her, and goes to follow Mindy and Chad into the living room, leading Sam by the hand she’s firmly grasped within her own.
And as colorful pieces are moved on a colorful board, Sam loses herself in the chaos of Mindy yelling and Tara thrusting her arms up in victory. Prefers this chaos to that of the book, to that that has seemed to follow her like a sickly shadow from out the attic that fateful night at thirteen and every step she’s taken after that.
After the game is finished ( with Chad and Mindy the winners, something they’ll never let Sam and Tara live down ) they all huddle on the couch beneath one blanket as they pick their favorite so bad it’s good films to binge. Tara has her head on Sam’s shoulder, and Sam allows her head to fall as she rests her cheek atop Tara’s head.
At some point Sam falls asleep, not that she remembers doing so — and when she does wake she’s solely lying on the couch, draped in the blanket they had all shared. Sam sits up, blinking sleep from bleary eyes. She looks to the window, finds the sky painted in shades of pale blue and baby pink. She yawns and stretches, allows the blanket to fall from her shoulders as she heads to her room.
The shredded paper is noticeably gone from the carpet, as are the shards of glass and ceramic. That book is nowhere to be found, gone from where Sam had last seen it face down on the dresser. Sam sees another book lying in wait in its place, and she walks over to pick it up, a grin overtaking her lips as the pads of her thumb brush against the text of the title,
Out Of Darkness, A True Story Of Survival by Sidney Prescott.
Sam flips it open, and catches scribbled text on the inside of the cover.
Hey Sammy! We wanted to get you this because you are not what Gale said. Gale tried to put even Sidney down, there’s a whole compilation of the news clips on YouTube. Did you know Sidney punched Gale? Twice? Mad respect. But anyways; Sidney didn’t let anything keep her down, and we know you won’t either — certainly not Gale Weathers. You, just like Sidney, are a survivor and a badass. We love you, and we’ll get out of darkness together .
Love,
Your sister Tara, and your bonus siblings Chad and Mindy
Sam laughs, tears falling down her cheeks. But now, instead of being forged by the withered fingers of sorrow, they’re carefully crafted by the soft hands of joy. Her head raises as she hears the front door open, hears Chad and Mindy bickering over something as Tara’s voice calls out,
“Hey Sammy! You up? We got bagels! You know, from that place on 8th Street that you like? Come on!”
As Sam gently places the book down on the nightstand to be read later that night, as she walks to join the rest in the living room, as she joins in on jabs and jest and pokes fun through mouthfuls of bagel, she can’t help but think that they were right . . .
They’d get out of this darkness, together .